"The first victory we can claim is that our hearts are free of hatred. Hence we say to those who persecute us and who try to dominate us: ‘You are my brother. I do not hate you, but you are not going to dominate me by fear. I do not wish to impose my truth, nor do I wish you to impose yours on me. We are going to seek the truth together’. THIS IS THE LIBERATION WHICH WE ARE PROCLAIMING."
Oswaldo José Payá Sardiñas (2002)

National Assembly woman María Corina Machado is right the Maduro regime and their Cuban handlers are afraid of a civic nonviolent movement. Consider for a moment that since the start of this year in Cuba, a totalitarian state, they've had to conduct 2,900 political arrests. Consider that after Cuban opposition democrats gathered more than 11,000 signatures in a petition drive in 2002 for political reforms which the regime responded by locking up the majority of the petition organizers with prison sentences of up to 28 years, expelled students and fired workers who signed the petition more than another 14,000 signed the petition later the following year and again turned them into the Cuban National Assembly. The petition and the effort to collect the signatures was called the Varela Project. Cuban state security and the murderous totalitarian apparatus of the Castro regime could not stop a nonviolent effort carried out by thousands of people.

100 Students protesting the lack of international solidarity set up a camp outside the UN office in Venezuela on March 24, 2014. Maduro's regime responded by sending in the national guard to disrupt the peaceful protests tear gassing students, burning tents, and arresting peacefully protesting students. The response of the students singing the national anthem and a new and larger group of students taking over and replacing the tents destroyed by the Bolivarian National Guard in front of the UN headquarters in Venezuela sent a powerful message to the Maduro regime, the Venezuelan people and the international community: we are here to stay until our just demands are met.

Daniel Pardo tweeted: "They attacked uslast nightand so weradicalized andpassedthe camp to the streets," an activistin front of theUN. Nonviolent students demonstrated their radicalism by practicing more nonviolence. Remaining disciplined in their nonviolence and radical in their defiance of the injustices that they are protesting is their best chance for success.